I found that a harder (well, longer in time between start and end) read than Knife Edge, but in a good, and obviously genre-appropriate, way.
As I mentioned in a post in the Struggling with characters' false beliefs thread, one of the ways I cope when reading about situations that make me feel uncomfortable is to slow down, or stop reading and then pick it up again. Now while Knife Edge had plenty of tense moments, with Small Bones, such situations were embedded in a narrative where the sense of threat kept increasing, notch by notch, with the inevitable slowing down of my reading. (I've seen comments where the reader couldn't put the book down. I can see why they reacted that way, but I'm not them. Theirs will likely be a far more common reaction than mine.) But in any case, I had to keep going to find out what might happen next.
To take a sharp right (or left, it doesn't really matter), I'd like to compare one very particular aspect of the book with Neil Asher's Gridlinked sequence. In that series of five books, there were things that happened that didn't make sense, but I stuck with the books because I liked the overall story and the way it was told. A few books in, the reason why those things happened became clear and in a satisfactory way.
I felt the same about some of the things in Small Bones... although the reasons appeared before the end of the book. Well, I think they did. given the (clearly devious) author's penchant for pulling (homicidal) rabbits out of the hat, I suspect that at least some of the reasons may be what I, as a reader, am intended to have worked out, only to be left in turns shocked and impressed when the real ones appear. (I won't say what I believe is happening, both to avoid spoilers and to prevent me looking a complete fool when we all discover what has actually been happening).
Anyway, what I really came to ask is: when's book three being released? It had better not be too far in the future.
